The Integrity Infrastructure Gap: Why SEA/SH Cases Keep Slipping Through the Cracks

The aid sector has made significant strides in tackling procurement fraud and financial corruption. But when it comes to sexual exploitation, abuse, and harassment (SEAH), many of those same systems falter.

This isn’t just a cultural problem — it’s an infrastructure problem.

The mechanisms built to detect fraud are often misapplied to human harm, leading to doubt, dismissal, and impunity for perpetrators. If we want to take SEAH seriously, we need to rebuild the integrity architecture to respond to abuse, not just embezzlement.

At the core of most institutional integrity systems is a financial logic: was money stolen, misused, or misreported?

This logic works when investigating fraud, but falls apart when applied to abuse cases where evidence is scarce, harm is subjective, and trauma shapes testimony. SEAH is not just a policy violation. It is a form of personal, psychological, and often gendered harm that requires a different response model.